"Plus [there is] a vast number of new customers. Whilst it is early days the results have been outstanding."

ANZ is ramping up its marketing of the deal, using its Apple Pay capability in a television advertising campaign while advertisements are adorning bus shelters around Sydney.

In interviews last week, the chief executives of Westpac Banking Corp, Brian Hartzer, and National Australia Bank, Andrew Thorburn, said negotiations with Apple will continue.

Westpac had struck a deal with Samsung two years ago to offer tap and go on Samsung phones "which is essentially the identical experience" as Apple Pay, Mr Hartzer said.

"It would be nice for us to offer [Apple Pay] in the context of what we are doing but in the end it has to be commercially sustainable. We will continue to talk to [Apple] and other wallet providers and see where we get to."

​Mr Thorburn pointed to NAB Pay, which was launched in January for Android phones and has been enabled by 25,000 customers and processed 100,000 transactions, according to a slide in NAB’s investor pack last week.

"We are going to look at ways to deploy NAB Pay," Mr Thorburn said.

"We would like to deploy it with Apple. But obviously that is an important conversation that we will have to have with them. We think NAB pay is strong and easily deployable on any device, we just need to work with the providers to get that to be the case."

Dividing the pie

Apple’s deal with ANZ was reached after the bank agreed to give up some of its interchange fees to Apple, and Apple was willing to compromise and reduce the level of fees it demanded from US banks, but confidentiality agreements imposed prevent discussion of the details.

Australian banks earn around $2 billion a year in interchange fees, which are paid by merchants for use of payments infrastructure.

The RBA is pushing to lower interchange fees to 30¢ for $100 of transactions, down from 50¢ for $100 of transactions.

In the United States, Apple is believed to earn about US15¢ on every $US100 of transactions. But in the US, the bank interchange fee is $1 for $100 of transactions.

However, given that ANZ debit cards are part of the deal, ANZ may have negotiated a flat fee for each transaction rather than one based on the volume of transactions because debit card interchange fees are flat, in contrast with credit card fees based on transaction volume.